dailydatewithgod

There is an unofficial rule in recovery known as rule 62, “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously!”  It is one I have come to cherish and celebrate in my life.  It is most evident when I remember to laugh at myself.  I see it as a sign of a light and open heart when I see the humorous side of how I behave or what I think.  There is no possible way that every thing I think, believe, and do is so powerful as to cause cataclysmic impact.  Yes, it is important to be intentional about life and do so from a place of good.  But even with the best of intentions and motives I still mess up.  I used to think if I made a mistake I was a mistake.  Now I can make a mistake and say, “oops”, own up to it, and make the necessary corrections.  The levity comes from the presence of light in my heart and mind.  It is the same space where I allow God in to show me how God sees things.  With this lightness perspective I can see where there is happenstance and laugh.  Levity is a sign we are in the flow of life and accept the reality of bumps and hiccups but it is not about blame or shame.  Levity reminds us to roll with the punches and let the giggles in every once in a while.

We are meant for relationship. Every interaction with another person is an opportunity for connection, learning, or loving.  We like to think it is only the pleasant interactions with others that are supposed to happen.  We determine that nothing good can come from conflict or disagreement.  Funny how there seems to be a lot of both of those things present in the world. There must be a disconnect between what we say we want and what we do.  Could it be that no matter what we do or how good our intentions are, conflict and disagreement will still exist?  It sure seems that way.  Perhaps God is calling us to take a closer look at what is happening when we are in conflict with others or their ideas. Maybe it not a bad thing for there to be disagreement but an opportunity to look at what we make that disagreement mean about the totality of the other person.  Of course it feels good to get along with others when we can share similar ideas and philosophies.  Yet, if all we were to do is agree and get along, we would never grow.  We would form a lot of group think.  Perhaps it is not the people and the ideas that we are in conflict with or disagree.  Maybe it is the approach on their part and ours of how to handle it.  If we lose our humanness when dealing with others, what does that make us?  It is not someone else’s fault that we do not agree with them. Why do we make them the villain?  Maybe by coming into contact with them God is inviting us to see God in other forms.  Our enemy is as much a creation of God as our best friend.  God is inviting us to learn what it means to love and grow in love.  Love is just the nice stuff.  Great love takes great courage.  Courage, meaning at our core, from the heart, is the space in which God dwells vibrantly and with great strength.  When we stay rooted to our sense of self in our hearts, we can learn to find love anywhere. God is everywhere, not just where we want God to be or the places it is nice for God to be.  When we are willing to trust the presence of God in any interaction or experience then we can see through the eyes of love and do not need to make anyone an enemy no matter how much conflict or disagreement.  This is not easy as is evident in our public and private conversations and interactions. It is not easy in the parking lot at Trader Joe’s or the line at the post office, but just because it is not easy does not mean love is not present.

It may be hard for us to fathom the idea that God is excited by our very existence but it is true.  God is love and creates all from love and in love.  What is more exciting than love.  God looks upon his creation and is excited at finding yet another way to show the world how much she adores it.  We are the exciting element of life.  Each of us.  We get an inkling of the possibility of God thinking like this because it is so contrary to how we think.  Over the years as my relationship with God has grown and changed, I am repeatedly reminded of how God sees things differently than me.  When I am humble enough to reach for God’s hand and whisper, God, show me how to see this differently or ask How do you see this? my whole perspective shifts.  The shift brings a light into my experience and it is always for the better.  By opening myself up to an exciting perspective I am actually more at home in the truth of who I am.  We see it in children who are probably the closest to God because of the limited time it has been from their original conception.  They find everything exciting.  All is novel and full of wonder.  They want to learn and grow and be shown a new perspective.  We lose that the more we disconnect from our own hearts.  Life can wear us down if we let it. It takes courage to be willing to let go of our perspective and adopt an exciting one.  It does not mean never experiencing bad things or being comfortable all the time.  It is an intuitive trust that there is life and love present in whatever it is we are experiencing.  This is the excitement, the hope, the belief in love.  On a day when we are worn out, frustrated, and feel like there is a dark cloud following us around it can be hard to conceive of any kind of excitement.  For me the quickest way to step back on the path of excitement of life is by taking a deep breath.  Even I forget all the time how simple the path of excitement begins.

When we think about closeness in terms of proximity it sounds like a simple discussion.  Either something is close or it is far.  Often times we look at physical proximity and make assumptions about other levels of closeness.  We figure if someone works for a particular company they are closely aligned with its philosophy.  If you are in close proximity to your family, you must be spending time together.  If one goes to church often they must be close to God.  If they are closely involved in their work they must be enjoying it or have a passion for it.  These assumptions about the reality of things based on what is seen as close can be misleading.  Closeness not only exists on multiple levels but it can be misleading.  How often do we compromise ourselves by staying close to someone whom we have grown apart from just because we are used to them?  How many of us assumed that others were close simply because they are seen together a lot?  But aside from all this, what about what lies closest to our hearts? Is it kindness and compassion?  Is it anger and frustration?  Where do our passions take us?  Do we know what lights us up?  Do we know what brings us down?  Those are the things that we are most closest to. Do we see God’s presence in any of those?  What we see with situations and people that we have close proximity to may not be the same things we hold in the deepest parts of ourselves.  What about our relationship with God?  Does that lie close in our hearts they way we are close to God’s heart?  Are we aware that we are close to God’s heart no matter what we think we deserve or our outside status?  What would it take for that to sink in?  What small step would need to occur for us to experience the reality of God’s to be as close to us as our own hearts?

I remember as a kid there was a hair care brand that became very popular called “Herbal Essences”.  The commercials stood out because the women appeared to be having orgasms from using the shampoo. I must admit I liked the smell but can’t say I was looking for more than just good smelling hair from them.  The commercials seemed kind of silly and overdone, but I suppose that is what makes them commercials.  Thinking back I wonder what the essence was they were focused on.  Somehow I did not think it had anything to do with the herbs.  It conveyed the idea that the essence was in the experience of using their shampoo.  Hmm, my brain could spend lots of pointless time trying to decipher that one, but I will spare you. 😉 Essences are our core.  Who we are in God is our essence.  It is conveyed in our spirit, our genuine expression of ourselves, and lives in the truest part of ourselves.  On my daily date with God during the meditation portion, I am guided to focus on my heart.  It sits at the center of our physical, emotional, and spiritual being.  From it extends our life force.  One of the hardest things to look at when I got into recovery is how misguided I had become in regards to my own heart.  Out of lack of safety I had covered it up with all kinds of protective devices because I thought it was what caused me to be hurt.  If I had not been so open.  If I weren’t so hopeful.  If I didn’t love so deeply.  If I didn’t feel connected to others, I would have never gotten hurt.  I mistakenly thought it was heart’s fault.  We are designed to be the essence of God. God loves.  Plain and simple.  When we get in touch with the crux of who we are, all that is there is love.  The beauty and the power of God that I have learned on our daily dates is that while I perceived outside circumstances and people to hurt me and my heart, there is nothing that could change my essence.  God as a force of love is more powerful than anything else in existence.  The space of our hearts is impacted by outside forces because love is dynamic but it is never changed.  Our essence cannot be undone.  I need to remember that when I am feeling anxious or afraid.  I want to recall that when I get angry and reactive towards the people and circumstances in my life including myself.  I need God’s help to bring me back to the truth and become reacquainted with my essence.  God is always ready and willing with an open heart and hand to reel us in and whisper to us of the essence of who we are.  It is up to us when we get disconnected to trust God always knows how to help us return to our essence.  If that is not the essence of an orgasmic sense of joy, I don’t know what is.

Being in the mysteries of life takes courage. It sounds very ethereal and nonsensical but mystery is the lifeblood of the universe.  Our minds tells us what is most important is the known, but when we are alive and in the moment we are not even conscious of what we know and do not know.  The mysteries of life keep us in the now because we are called upon to be fully present so we can be with what comes next.  The mysteries of life lead to experiencing fortuities we did not think were possible. These chance occurrences would not have happened had we been wedded to what we already knew.  It is a wise person who is intimately aware of the presence of things they do not know that they do not know. It is the fortuities that make room for the presence of God.  We call them coincidences.  I call them God-incidences.  If we are able to trust in the power of something greater than ourselves that is interested in our growth in love through all things we make ourselves ready to receive fortuities and celebrate them.  Depending on our perspective of life as a place to learn and grow will deeply effect how we see the fortuities that show up.  It is not easy to presume that every chance occurrence will have in it some growth experience for which we are grateful some day.  At the time the fortuity might seem like the worst thing that ever happened to us.  It is easy to place that perspective on a fortuity than on a planned event.  Through my daily dates with God, I have come to look forward to the fortuities.  I trust God is showing me a way to grow and learn about love in a way I would not have conceived of because God knows the best way for my heart to expand.  Through this lens the fortuity of bumping into someone at a conference I was hoping they would be at is the same as bumping into them because our cars knocked fenders.  The latter unknown fortuity typically brings angst and frustration.  But, if I remember to turn towards God and ask God, how do you see this?, I can become open to the power of fortuities in my life being the mysterious elements that keep me in the God-incidences.  Did I mention this is not easy?

The power of love can be witnessed through the power of light.  We have a cognitive understanding of how light works and how it affects us.  We know when we are in the presence of light and when it is not present.  The tangibility of light provides an inkling of an understanding of love.  It is something that we can sense with much more than just our eyes.  Much like light, our awareness of it is dependent upon our mindset.  However, our lack of awareness does not mean it is not present.  Love and light spark something deep in us which enable us to see without our eyes.  We sense their presence as an emergence of energy.  When we get quiet we can feel the emerging within us.  We do not in a literal sense give light to one another but we all know what it feels like to be lit up by someone.  When we are looking to allow love to emerge within us others will often describe us being lit up or glowing.  The question remains, what is keeping an emerging presence of love from growing in our hearts?  Are there things we are doing or not doing to avoid emerging? God encourages us to allow what is innate in us to emerge and be shared with those around us.  When we are fearful or controlling it is hard to allow anything but those energies to emerge from us.  We think it affects only us and our mindset but others around us feel it.  God desires for us to get curious about what emerging the truth of light and love would look like in our lives and explore it.

We think of home as a place.  It is our dwelling.  It is where we set down roots.  It is where we identify who we are with whom we belong.  But there is a profound space of home that exists within us.  It is where we are rooted.  It is the space from which we identify ourselves.  It is where love dwells.  We find our peace of mind in the home of our hearts.  We cultivate the awareness of our connection to God and all that is in this home.  It allows us to be wherever we are in the world and know who we are and where we come from.  We are not as rattled by the changing experiences of an outwards home because ours lies in a place that no one can touch unless we let them. Home is the space where God and I meet for our dates each day and I am opened to the breadth and depth of life that exists within me beginning with my breath.

We tend to picture traveling as something happening outside ourselves.  We travel from place to place in our cars.  We travel across cities and countries.  We travel when we move dwellings.  Motion typically involves travel even if it is moving our hand up and down.  Traversing implies a pathway and a direction that leads one across or through. So while we can traverse this great big world we live in by train, plane, or walking we are invited by God to traverse the most important distance, the one within us. It is the pathway between our heart and mind.  We all know how to travel with our mind leading the way.  It is more familiar and therefore more comfortable.  It is a well-worn pathway and we default to it quite easily.  This is not a bad thing.  Our minds are wonderful and we would not be here without them. We all also know experiences where we have stepped outside the path of our mind and traversed the way of the heart.  It creates a broader and more expansive experience of life if we are open to it.  Learning how to join the paths of our heart and our mind creates a journey all its own.  In my experience, traversing the pathway between my head and my heart has opened me up to wanting to know more about how my heart works.  Linking the two and traversing together being sure to not abandon one pathway for another requires discipline.  A similar discipline to showing up for my daily dates with God.  Like the dates, the payoff far outweighs the patience and persistence required to traverse the long and winding road of heart and mind.

It may be difficult to imagine that our perception sets up our reality.  We like to think we do not have that kind of control or impact on our lives. We like the idea when we have a positive perception but don’t like it when we have a negative one.  We like to think it is because of the outside circumstances that we are frustrated, worried, angry, or happy.  It is convenient or at least familiar to view ourselves as victim’s of our circumstances.  I didn’t turn all the stop lights to red on my way to work this morning which caused me to be late.  I didn’t cause that person to yell at me or cut me off.  What could I have possibly done to stop it from raining?  Yes all those things happen to us but we are not victims.  We always have a choice in how to see them.  We can choose to assume that the experience is meant to invoke negativity, complaining, dissatisfaction and frustration but that is our choice.  It is like the expression, one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.  When we are in a good place we look to cultivate experiences of more good. When we are in a negative head space we hunker down and just hope it doesn’t get any worse.  Yet barring up the walls around our heart out of a sense of protection blocks any opportunity for love to come in.  Therefore, we end up experiencing more of the same.  If we opt instead to pause and take stock of the mindset we are evoking through our interpretation of the events, we can choose a different path.  Gratitude is one of the easiest ways out of this. I can be grateful to have a car to drive to work.  I can be grateful that I saw the person cut me off instead of crashing into them.  I can be grateful that the soil is getting much-needed water.  It is not about discounting or numbing out from the frustration.  It is about seeing it as the interpretation of what is happening and recognizing we can stay there or evoke a different experience.  It is not easy, none of this is.  However, it is not as difficult as it seems.  It is different.  It is our default to react to life.  Reacting allows us to survive.  Responding is what encourages us to thrive.  Sometimes I cannot get my head out of the angst or frustration to save my life.  My perception is so wedded to the idea that it is not going to get any better.  This is when I reach for God’s hand. God, help me to see this differently.  God, I need you to evoke a different perception to place in front of what I am currently feeling.  God, this sucks but I trust that love is present somewhere in this and it can evoke in me the eyes to see it, help!